


entropy

by foxlives



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:41:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3503759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxlives/pseuds/foxlives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to hate her and he thought he'd done it, thought that if she deserved it enough he could just cut out the part of his heart that had belonged to his sister since before he could remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	entropy

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings** for referenced child neglect/abuse.

The hospital is flat, white, a paper cut-out like the ones Debbie used to make out of cereal boxes and junk mail. Lip feels the same way, ragged and insubstantial, like he left the greater part of himself back at school, back in the real world with his real-person life and not the limbo of this hospital waiting room. He wishes he were anywhere but here, but knows with a dead certainty that he's not going to leave. 

Inside his head, Fiona's voice is telling him, _the gallaghers stick together_.

 

Whenever he closes his eyes he sees Fiona's face so he doesn't. Whenever he closes his eyes he sees Liam with white powder around his mouth and he thinks about that time a year ago when they were making Fiona a cake because Debbie had begged. Him and Debbie and Liam, and the mix that got over everything, their faces, their hands.

Even eyes strained open, all he can see is Fiona being hauled away, how awful and pathetic and guilty she'd looked when the handcuffs came down around her wrists. _she's guilty_ , he'd wanted to tell the officers. _i can tell you right now. she's guilty guilty guilty_.

 

  
He remembers when Ian broke his arm in sixth grade, and how it had been Lip's fault, spent the spring climbing around an abandoned house over on Dale because it was fun, it was something new to explore. Ian kept following him and Lip kept telling him to fuck off but without really meaning it, because it wasn't like Ian had anywhere else to go. Wherever Lip went, Ian went, like a mantra, one of the unwritten rules of the Gallagher household.

Lip knew this and he still led the way into the house, through the back door hanging open on its hinges, the lock punched clean through the rotted wood. Inside, squares of linoleum had been torn up, showing their gluey gray undersides; the fridge was yellowed and dust-smothered. Lip remembers that house like a bad dream, just scattered images and a gut, instinctive dread.

They had been screwing around on the second level, mostly support beams and rotted-out floorboards and a certified deathtrap; in a neighborhood even a grade or two nicer it'd have be condemned years before. Ian had still been smaller than him then, but he'd always been pretty good at sports, anything that had to do with his body, whereas Lip could outrun cops and irate storekeepers and that was pretty much it. So Ian was keeping up with him, scrambling over the wood just a half-step or so behind Lip, and so Lip felt it like a suddenly lost limb when Ian disappeared from next to him.

The wood had given out under Ian's foot and he'd tripped, falling forward and onto his arm that broke under him with a noise that still sounds like a firework or a gunshot when Lip remembers it, that startling. Ian's face had crumpled and he'd bit his lip, trying desperately not to cry. Lip had felt something deaden in his chest. 

He remembers the rest of the day in flat, colorless images. The withered grass of the street outside, the salt-crusted car he'd hotwired with shaking fingers, the cream-colored walls of the emergency room. Fiona's pale face when she'd come to the hospital, gotten home from work to find the message Lip'd left on the landline from the payphone in the corner. He doesn't remember what he'd said except that his voice sounded calm to his own ears, flat and colorless too. 

And he still couldn't escape that feeling in his chest, like he himself had become an accident on the side of the road, a train wreck he wanted to look away from. Like something had started living with him inside his skin, and he didn't want to look at what it had turned him into.

 

Lip knows a lot about guilt, is what he's trying to say.

 

This hospital is the same as every other hospital he's ever been in, and he stares down at the forms he has to fill out (flat, colorless) and focuses, makes them come into crisp contrast in front of his eyes. He thinks about his voice on the phone leaving that message to Fiona six years ago, toneless and dead. He presses the cheap plastic pen between his fingers. _Name: Philip Gallagher_. 

 

  
And what else Lip knows is, guilt is not enough. If Liam dies tonight in this paper cut-out hospital all Fiona's guilt — buckets and bathtubs of it, oceans couldn't hold all the guilt Fiona keeps inside her — it won't matter. It's never mattered. She thinks it does but it doesn't. All those years without enough Christmas presents and enough food and enough time and enough attention paid. Feeling bad about it wouldn't change anything, Lip had wanted to tell her then and hadn't. 

He knows that if his sister wasn't behind bars right now he take her by the shoulders and shake her, say, _this where all your guilt fucking got you?_

 

The sun comes up, Lip assumes. He sits back against the hallway wall, pulling his knees up in front of him, and thinks about how when Ian was little and sick or sad he's always make himself as small as possible. It's something wild animals do, hiding away when they're hurt. Lip's always thought he was better than that, than his own instincts.

 

There had been a bad time, when Lip was six and Fiona was ten and Ian was barely five. Monica was back but not really, back for Frank but not for them, and Lip remembers that winter mostly by the ripped-up back seat of the Oldsmobile they'd been living in, the sick green linoleum flooring of Frank's dealer's apartment. It smelled like what Lip knows now is meth, and they'd be left there for days sometimes, left for themselves with the dealer and his buddies and the parade of junkies who all looked the same, indistinguishable under the punched-in eyes and shaky hands.

There was a closet hollowed out next to the bathroom and Fiona would make them stay in it, the slatted door letting in strips of light and harsh laughter, the TV a constant blur of sound. Fiona would say, _at least it's warm, right, munchkins?_ and Ian would nod and Lip would nod too, too young to know not to play into Fiona's bullshit. He and Fiona would sit opposite each other, closest to the door with their knees pulled up to their chests, and that left just enough room for Ian to lay down between them and the back wall with his legs only scrunched up a little, bony knees digging into Lip's side.

That's what Lip remembers most about that winter, sitting in that dark shit-smelling closet with his knees shoved up against Fiona's, Ian asleep next to them, Frank and Monica just gone, and Fiona still telling them, _at least it's warm_. They'd lived off a bottle of 7-Up and a bag of corn chips Fiona had swiped from the kitchen cabinet, and they'd timed bathroom visits to whenever everyone else in that house was passed out cold enough. His stomach was always cramped, from hunger and from staying in the same jackknifed position between Fiona and the wall. 

He thinks, in bitter hindsight, that that winter might've been when he'd stopped trusting Fiona to know anything at all.

 

He carries Liam around with him like a talisman, his still-tiny body warm and breathing proof that things aren't the worst they could be. Liam sleeps on his dorm bed and eats off his plate in the cafeteria and plays happily with Lip's protractor as Lip slogs through his homework. There's a displaced paranoia in himself that Lip can't shake: if he was Liam, he wouldn't want to go back to that house. Back to Fiona. 

Maybe it's Lip himself who doesn't want to go back. Either way, he keeps Liam with him.

 

When Monica had got pregnant that last time, seven years late and after they'd all gotten used to there being the five of them and no one else — when she'd sat at the dinner table and told them, _you're getting a little baby brother_ like they were all five or stupid or not Frank and Monica's kids and born older than their years, no one had said a word. Monica was smiling her cotton-candy smile and Frank leaned over to kiss her on the mouth, and then Debbie had said _wow_ and Carl had said _cool_ and Ian had asked when the due date was and that was it. They kept eating their pasta, and suddenly Frank and Monica eating dinner with them wasn't the strangest thing that had happened that week.

Lip had gotten up that night at three or four in the morning, tired of staring at the ceiling and trying to iron out his thoughts. Lip's brain had always moved too fast, tripping over itself as it picked apart a situation, laying it out like a diagram. Thinking up every possible outcome, and always choosing the wrong one.

Ducking out into the hall, he'd seen the bathroom door shut tight, light sliding out from under it and onto the floor. Carl and Ian were both accounted for, and if Frank or Monica was throwing up they wouldn't bother closing the door. He'd tried the knob, whispering "Debs?" through the wood.

"No," Fiona's voice had whispered from the other side. "Everything's good. Go back to sleep."

"Wasn't sleeping." The knob twisted uselessly in his hand, the lock thrown from the inside. "Fi, c'mon. Want me to get you toast or somethin?"

The lock slid back, and he'd opened the door to find Fiona curling back up against the side of the tub, doing a little winging motion with her hands to wipe away still-obvious tears. "I'm fine. Not sick."

"Okay."

He'd closed the door again behind him, more a reflex than anything, protecting Fiona from having the world see her like this. Her hair was ragged, face red and tired, holding her arms over her chest like they'd protect her. Lip stood uselessly against the shut door, watching her, waiting for a clue.

"I had it all figured out," she'd said, finally, voice hoarse and whispery. Her head was in her hand, like a statue, lines carved into her face like marble.

"Yeah," he said, when she hadn't said anything else.

"Eleven years," she'd said, and he'd understood then. "Carl'd be eighteen. I'd only be thirty."

"Yeah," he'd said again, more defeated than anything, and he'd hated that. He eased himself down next to her on the bathroom floor, shoulderblades wedged against the lip of the tub. She'd been warm by his side, their arms pressed together, as he tried to say something else, something better. "I can help. Me an' Ian. You don't gotta do this by yourself."

She shook her head. "I can't ask you guys to — you guys are my like, great white hope." She tried to grin at him. "You need to do good in school, go to college, set an example for the kids."

He hadn't said how fucking unlikely that was, hadn't reminded her the the Gallaghers only had luck in small things. The gas bill getting paid, Fiona finding another job, all of them alive and okay. They can't ask for more or some balance disrupts itself, some deal made a long time ago becomes void. He'd know this early and she'd known it before him. The Gallaghers take what they can and they live with it, don't ask for more.

He'd fit his arm around her shoulders and she'd put her head on his shoulder. He'd rested his head on hers and they'd stayed like that until they fell asleep, exhausted, under the hard bathroom light.

 

He stands in the dorm hallway, linoleum cold under his feet and the strip lighting boring into his eyes, Fiona's voice distorted just a little over the phone line. He tries to convince himself she sounds pathetic, scared. He hangs up without saying a word, not convinced he can talk to her at all anymore without screaming.

The phone is heavy in his hand and he stares straight ahead, standing in the detritus of the party last night, something just as heavy lodged in his throat. He wants to say it's dread or anger or even pity but he can't. He wants to hate her and he thought he'd done it, thought that if she deserved it enough — and she did, she did — he'd be able to just flip that switch, cut out the part of his heart that had belonged to his sister since before he could remember.

Later, seeing Fiona cramped into Liam's bed loosens something in Lip's chest, a tangle of affection that takes him wholly by surprise. As a kid he'd always thought of Fiona as everpresent, unshakeable, there for them always. He'd never thought of who she'd be without them, and now, standing in the room that used to be at least partway his, he wishes he'd never had to.

 

He had asked Fiona about that winter one time, years later when they had the house and Monica was gone for what they thought was good. He was maybe fourteen, doing his homework with a beer at the kitchen table, and he'd asked, "Remember that fuckin dealer's place?"

Fiona's hands had fumbled the pan she'd been washing. "Mm."

He'd marked down another answer on his worksheet. _a(b + c) = ab + ac_. This shit was way too fucking easy. 

"You remember that?" Fiona had said after a minute or two, still scrubbing at a plate.

"Yeah," Lip said. "I was like, six."

"Jesus." Fiona swipes the back of her hand across her forehead. "Always thought you guys were too young to remember all that."

"Yeah, well." Lip scanned his pencil down the list of problems, like he needed to check if he'd got them right. "You kept saying _at least it's warm_ ," he told her, surprised somehow that he still sounds bitter, after all these years.

He'd looked up then and he and Fiona had got caught staring at each other over the kitchen counter, a whole conversation in the look in Fiona's eyes and Lip's jittering fingers. "Seemed better than tellin you guys it was gonna be okay," she'd said finally. "Got tired of lyin to ya."

She'd turned back to the sink, and Lip hadn't known, then, how to think of that.

 

  
"It's okay, it's okay," he tells her, like he's talking to one of the kids. She looks small to him, knees drawn together and hands in her lap, and he hates that.

He can remember getting baked, years ago, sprawled out next to Ian on the bed that had been Lip's at the time. Saying, "Hate seeing Fiona cry," pot-hazy and feeling like there are two of him, one Lip right next to the other. Like he could say anything, be anyone, because when the high ends he'd dissolve and his doppelganger, who kept his mouth shut and was generally better at living Lip's life than Lip was, would take over, soldier on.

Ian had said, "What?"

"Hate it," Lip said again. He'd closed his eyes. It's like her whole face falls apart, pieces scrambling until she's no longer Lip's sister, Lip's Fiona. Like he doesn't even recognize her.

Ian'd taken another hit, fingers practiced. He shrugs. "Wouldn't know."

It'd been the first time Lip had considered that his Fiona wasn't his siblings' Fiona, that he knew about a part of her that was somehow innately inaccessible to the younger kids. He feels that again, in this faded-out gas station in Wisconsin, his world shifting under him. His knowing of Fiona upset in some way. For just a second, looking through the smeary glass of the gas station door, he hadn't recognized her at all.

 

They drive home quiet, Wisconsin white and void around them and the sky hanging low. Fiona is quiet next to him, gnawing at her thumbnail like she hasn't since she was twelve or thirteen. Lip drinks his coffee in measured sips, even after it's gone cold. 

By the time they cross back into their own state Fiona's pressed her forehead to the glass, closed her eyes. Lip doesn't think she's asleep but he lets her fake it, stealing glances at her like a bad habit. Unconvinced, still, that she won't disappear from next to him. 

He can feel something solidifying in his chest, resolve building up under his ribs. Fiona needs him now like he'd thought as a kid she didn't need anybody. His sister who he'd thought was indestructible's fallen apart: the diagram's rearranged, new black angles on a blank paper page. Something has leveled between them, Fiona taken apart and built up again new. She's different now: they both are.

The flat white sky presses down, the highway a dark cut-out in the pale dead world. Tired and sure, Lip brings his sister back home.

**Author's Note:**

> title vaguely from 4x07:
> 
> \- now, from our earlier discussions we know that entropy is a measure of what?  
> \- _disorder._


End file.
